


We Were Gods Once

by Ehentalix



Category: My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic
Genre: Gen, Suicide, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-12
Updated: 2018-12-12
Packaged: 2019-09-16 21:55:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16962192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ehentalix/pseuds/Ehentalix
Summary: An anniversary long forgotten, a friend nobody remembers. A madman talks to a rock, but is anyone there to hear it?





	We Were Gods Once

Do you remember?

_Can_ you remember, as you are now, my dearest?

What it felt like, being as we were, in the times before? The adoration, the worship, the adulation of the masses? When we ruled not out of fear or hatred, but out of pure, honest, and genuine love?

We were powerful, then. Oh yes, of course, we are powerful now, but back then, none could match us. We four were the Divine; with naught but a whim, a whisper, a thought in the darkness, we brought about an Age of prosperity that has never been seen since.

Oh, the people these days think they live in a wondrous time, what with their modern amenities and their so-called mastery of the world around them. But I remember a time when such things were thought of as base trivialities; who needed to control the land when with but a prayer, a harvest would be as bountiful as the day was long? Who needed to conquer the skies when even the meanest among us could move about the world at an instant? What use was learning to defend yourself from beasts of any manner when the Gods themselves assured safe passage to any and all throughout each of the Kingdoms?

Oh, my beloved, do you remember the feeling of listening to a mortal’s fondest wishes, their every need, and being able to grant to them whatever they so desired? They were not petty, then, to ask for such things as were unneeded; for why bother when it was so easy to simply live one’s life? Do you remember the happiness in their hearts, the joy upon their faces, their _love_ for us, back then?

 

Do you remember the day when it all disappeared?

I remember. I remember the calling. She called to us, summoned us to Her. We came, of course we did; for who were we, even Gods that we were, to ignore Her when She called?

We should never have listened. Three could have answered Her call as well as four. One of us should have stayed behind. Maybe then, all of this could have been prevented. If one of us had been there, seen what was happening, been able to warn the others, before it was too late!

But we went. Because She called. We answered. Because she called.

We lost everything.

Because She called.

 

We were worried at the time, do you remember? It had been so long since any of us had returned to the place we once called home, high above the skies and the stars. Do you remember the look on Her face when we arrived, the mixture of panic and relief? Perhaps there was sorrow there, too; sadness for what was to come. But perhaps I am just wishing. Even now, after all this time, I still hold out hope that she meant well, that she knew. Or perhaps it would be better to think it mere ignorance, my dear.

There was a cry, She told us, a cry for help that echoed across the galaxy; a request for aid that we, and all like us, were beholden to answer. Prepare, She said, for a war unlike any other before, unlike anything this world or any other had seen. And what else could we do but prepare? We were dutiful children, bound not only by oath but by honour to follow her into battle. So we prepared. And then, we went.

Why did we go?

Why didn’t one of us, why didn’t She, why didn’t **_anyone_** stop to think?

Why didn’t we think of what we were leaving behind?

 

Do you remember the battle, beloved? The pain, the sorrow, the death and destruction and decay on a scale so grand it even made _my_ heart shudder. I still hear them, sometimes, those we fought and maimed and killed in that war. The screams of the damned, those who were doomed to suffer for eternity, all for crimes we were never told of, for reasons we never knew. Do you still hear them too, beloved?

It changed us, that war. We committed such atrocities that I will not recount them even here, even now. We were thanked for our services, afterwards, and allowed to return home. It was a blessing that none of the four of us had fallen, we thought. A miracle beyond the miracles we ourselves made every day. We four helped turn the tide of that great battle, and She commended us as we returned.

To this day, I still can’t tell you if we won.

 

Do you remember when She told us She was leaving? She said that we had grown, come into our own as Gods, and that Her presence above us, Her guiding light, was no longer necessary. We were about halfway home when She left, with a parting wave and a tearful farewell. Do you remember how we embraced her, how She told us that one day, She would come by and see how we were doing without her? That was three thousand years ago. I wonder if She’ll ever make it back?

Would we welcome Her if She did?

 

Do you remember coming back home?

Do you remember the shock, when we realized just how long we had been gone? Do you remember, my dearest, the agony we felt as we saw what had happened to our beautiful creation? Five hundred years, it had been, since the day we answered the call. Five hundred years, the mortals had been left, with no Gods to guide them, nobody to answer their prayers. Their populations had been decimated, the Kingdoms torn apart. They were starving, and dying, and all the while they _screamed_ for us to save them.

But we didn’t.

We couldn’t.

We had abandoned them. And so, they abandoned us.

 

The temples were gone; razed to the ground, the stones and metals and decorations taken and repurposed into shelter against the suddenly hostile world. We reached out to them, we tried to tell them. But they could not hear us. Oh, there were one or two who had kept an inkling of the Faith of their forebears, and we were able to use that ghost of a connection to find out what had happened. But we could not speak to them, and they would not speak to us.

Do you remember the hurt? The agony we felt when we learned what we had done?

Do you remember what happened next?

 

I was the one who found her that day, our beloved sister. A century had passed since our return and not a day of that, not a moment had gone by where she did not try to reach out to the mortals who were left. To try and help them, to try and reshape the world as we once had. But it didn’t work. And so she…

We’re immortal. We were then, and we are now. A God can’t commit suicide. We can’t die. But she tried, and she came close. Do you remember what was left of her? Do you remember how she keened to feel the love of her subjects once more, to have it fill her? She was empty, she said, because she was no longer their Queen. So she left, and told us that one way or another, she would feel their love again, even if it took her a thousand years.

 

Our brother was the next to go, do you remember? He said that he would travel to the barren wastes and fight off the monsters as an Avatar, to prove to the mortals that their Gods had not abandoned them with any malicious intent. But without our sister, he grew weary, distant. He became cold, and he began to hate. He began to despise the mortals, those who were once our worshipers. He blamed them for what became of his bride, and he turned his anger upon the very skies, kicking up a storm to match the sorrow in his heart. The last words he spoke to me were an oath to make them rue the day they turned their backs upon us. He vowed never to rest until their bonds were split, just as his bond with our sister had been split. As he himself split, in the end.

I wonder, does he still burn, in the centre of that fire?

Did it ever warm his heart, and make him whole again?

 

I was the last of us to turn, do you remember? All I wanted was to hear them laugh again. The mortals, our brother, our sister. You. I just wanted to hear everyone laugh, and be happy, and go back to the way we had been in the old days when the world was young.

It started small. Just a snap of the fingers, just to see if I could still do it; a harmless joke, turning that river to flow in the other direction, just a silly little prank. I never thought they would have taken to swimming on that shore; I couldn’t have known they would be fishing upon the waters! I went mad, when I realized what had happened. Absolutely barmy. I thought that if the world wasn’t going to laugh at my jokes, then by damn I was going to laugh at the world!

Do you remember when they caught up to me, all those years later?

Did you miss me at all, or hate what I had become?

 

I’m better now, my love. Not what I once was, but better. I met a mortal girl, fell in mortal love, and mourned her mortal passing. She was a lot like you, really. She reached out to me; much like you once did, and brought me out of my madness. She showed me that even after all this time, even after everything I had done, including to her and hers, I was still worth caring about. I told her, once, of what we had been. Of our brother, of our sister. Of you. I brought her here on our hundredth year together, just before she passed. That was six centuries ago. Do you remember?

Can you feel in there, my beloved?

 

Do you remember the last time we saw each other, before you turned yourself to this? You told me you had found a solution, that you would take an Avatar just long enough to give birth to our children, and then you would lock yourself away before the madness could take you like it had taken the three of us. You would give birth to twins who would come to be as close as mortals could come to what we once were. They would be ageless, but not immortal. Powerful, but not Divine. They would come to find me, when they were grown, and start the path towards the future.

I know you don’t remember, but they were everything you dreamed of and more.

 

Hm? Oh, I didn’t see you there, old friend; how long have you been standing there? What’s that? Talking to a mountainside? Yes, I suppose I am still a bit mad after all these years. Come along then, let’s return home; I have something to celebrate. Oh, nothing you’d remember, just another, older friend.


End file.
